The Problem of Priming Minority Students

Brain Blogger has an article analyzing the possible causes of the scholastic achievement gap between minority students and their non-minority counterparts. While lack of school funding and other socioeconomic disparities are certainly large contributing factors to this divide, this article focuses on the psychology of being a minority student and how established racial stereotypes can affect academic performance.

Intrigued by the discrepancy in academic performance between African American and white students, Prof. Claude Steele has researched test performance among students of these populations in a laboratory setting. In an initial experiment, Steele had African American and white Stanford University undergraduates complete a standardized test. Although the African American and white participants were pre-selected to be matched on intellectual ability, the African American students performed significantly worse than their white counterparts on the test. Next, Steele brought in another group of intellectually matched African-American and white Stanford undergraduates to the lab. This time, the participants completed the same test, but were instructed that the study was interested in how people reason, and they were not told that the content of the test came from a standardized achievement test. In this condition, the participants performed comparably. Finally, a third group of African-American and white Stanford undergraduates were instructed, just as the first group, that the test was a standardized achievement test. This time, however, participants subsequently answered a ‘word completion’ task, in which the were given only a few letters and asked to create a word. The African-American participants produced significantly more race-related words than the white students, suggesting that racial stereotypes were indeed primed in them, which may have been what was driving the observed differences.

Subsequent research has confirmed these early findings that stereotype threats surrounding academic performance may influence minorities’ standardized testing. For example, when minority group membership is made salient (i.e. filling out a questionnaire about racial or ethnic identity) subsequent performance on academic achievement tests is significantly lowered compared to when group identity is not primed. Interestingly, the direction of these results are not the same for all minorities. That is, when Asian American students are primed of their minority identity, their performance on academic tasks improves. Researchers suggest that this is because there is a positive stereotype regarding Asian American academic achievement.

Distance Increases Creativity

In an article published yesterday by Scientific American, researchers suggest that removing yourself both spatially and temporally from a problem can increase creative solutions. Better yet, you can save the money on the plane ticket or gas because simply imagining the distance will suffice. Psychological distance, according to the construal level theory (CLT), refers to "anything that we do not experience as occurring now, here, and to ourselves" and it is possible to induce this state by taking "another person's perspective, or by thinking of the question as if it were unreal and unlikely."

In studies conducted, researchers showed that informing participants of the location where a task was developed had a significant affect on their performance of that task. When asked to think up as many different modes of transportation as possible in a given amount of time, the participants that were told that the task was developed at a distant university "generated more numerous and original modes of transportation than participants in the near condition." Previous studies have shown that distancing time instead of location produced similar results. In general, a task that is perceived as being further away in time and space will yield more unique solutions than if it is perceived as being closer.

The authors of the article explain that:
This research has important practical implications. It suggests that there are several simple steps we can all take to increase creativity, such as traveling to faraway places (or even just thinking about such places), thinking about the distant future, communicating with people who are dissimilar to us, and considering unlikely alternatives to reality. Perhaps the modern environment, with its increased access to people, sights, music, and food from faraway places, helps us become more creative not only by exposing us to a variety of styles and ideas, but also by allowing us to think more abstractly. So the next time you’re stuck on a problem that seems impossible don’t give up. Instead, try to gain a little psychological distance, and pretend the problem came from somewhere very far away.

If You Thought Google Earth Was Impressive...

Since Bill Gates officially left his full-time position at Microsoft, he has been spending his time trying to cure disease, reform the educational system, and fund cutting edge research projects through Microsoft Research. Maybe he should have quit sooner. He recently bought the rights to The Messenger Lectures by quantum pioneer Richard Feynman and released them to the world through Project Tuva. Most impressively, however, is Microsoft's World Wide Telescope, a program that is similar to Google Earth but much, much wider in scope.

While Google Earth is limited to the varied terrain and architecture of our planet, the only limit the World Wide Telescope knows is the observable universe. Dr. Roy Gould explains that “The World Wide Telescope takes the best images from the greatest telescopes on Earth ... and in space ... and assembles them into a seamless, holistic view of the universe. This new resource will change the way we do astronomy ... the way we teach astronomy ... and, most importantly, I think it's going to change the way we see ourselves in the universe,”...“The creators of the World Wide Telescope have now given us a way to have a dialogue with our universe.” I'm tempted to say something like "the young aspiring astronomer that I and so many other children once was would be absolutely blown-away by this revolutionary resource", but the truth is that even today with an understanding of the exponential rate of technological advancement somewhat dulling my sense of amazement at new developments (I've come to expect a lot), the WWT absolutely blows my mind. I suggest that everyone download this program and spend some time exploring the universe as soon as possible. I recommend taking some of the guided tours to get started.

The Dawk Shows Some Intermediate Fossils

The UK Does It Better

First, they launch the wonderfully refreshing atheist bus campaign, and now the Anglican church is falling apart. In an article published in the Sunday Telegraph last month, a Church of England bishop predicts that the Anglican Church will "cease to exist within a generation." If that's not good news, then I don't know what is. "If decline continues, Christian Research has estimated that in five years' time church closures will accelerate from their present rate of 30 a year to 200 a year as dwindling congregations find the cost of keeping them open too great." Not only is the church losing older members, but the pool of potential church-goers is also dwindling. "Out of every 1,000 live births in England in 2006/7 only 128 were baptised as Anglicans." In the early 1900's, by contrast, 609 out of every 1,000 were baptized. I am highly skeptical of such good news, but I'm hopeful. If only American Christian's follow suit...

There's a Replicator in My Head!

What is so special about genes? Richard Dawkins posed this question 33 years ago in his massively influential book The Selfish Gene. His answer was simple: they are replicators. At their core, genes and their proteinaceous partners are beautifully adept at copying and transferring information. By 1976, when his book was first published, this was a well known fact, but Dawkins had the curiosity and insight to ask the question, what other replicators, if any, might there be?

Not satisfied with his colleague's solely genetic explanation of human behavior, Dawkins saw the need to include a cultural counter part to the gene. Thus, the term meme was introduced to the world to account for culturally transferable replicators. Like genes, memes range in size and often have associates that replicate together. A meme can be a word, song, slogan, idea or any other culturally significant propagator and, like the idea of god, can often have a lot of baggage accompany it. While genes lie in the twists and turns of sugars, phosphates, and nucleic acids that make up DNA, memes take up residency in the neurochemical and anatomical changes that occur in the brain during memory formation. Unlike genes, they replicate not with intricate biochemical machinery, but simply by imitation as one person passes a story, song, or idea on to another. Hopelessly at the mercy of Darwinian evolution, memes selfishly compete for residency in our brains every chance they get.

In a recent article written by Stephen Hawking comparing the rate of change of internal information (genes) to the external information reservoir (some of which become memes), he notes that the information in our DNA has probably only changed a few million bits since the appearance of homo sapiens, while the meme pool produced by books alone increases by a hundred billion bits every year. In short, the meme pool is much, much larger than the gene pool. In addition to this tremendous disparity in the quantity of information, memetic evolution occurs at a much faster rate than genetic evolution. While our brains are evolving on a Darwinian time scale, the information they are processing is growing and evolving at a much increased rate. This startling disparity between internal and external information flow, Hawking argues, has resulted in a new stage of evolution he calls "an external transmission phase."

Although it is uncertain what the ramifications of this widening disparity could be, Hawking notes that we will soon be able to give genes a chance to catch up. We are quickly entering an era of self designed evolution in which parents will be able to manipulate the genetic characteristics of their unborn children. "At first," he notes "these changes will be confined to the repair of genetic defects, like cystic fibrosis, and muscular dystrophy. These are controlled by single genes, and so are fairly easy to identify, and correct. Other qualities, such as intelligence, are probably controlled by a large number of genes. It will be much more difficult to find them, and work out the relations between them. Nevertheless, I am sure that during the next century, people will discover how to modify both intelligence, and instincts like aggression." Hopefully this will turn out to be the right move, eventually upgrading our outdated hardware to better able handle the exponential bombardment of external information.

I think it's worth mentioning that the word meme has certainly lived up to its name these last 33 years with 348,000,000 search results on google. Jesus only has 216,000,000. :)

The Reason Project

Launched earlier this year by author, neuroscientist, and outspoken atheist Sam Harris, the Reason Project is a "charitable foundation devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society". Members of the advisory board include Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Steven Pinker, Bill Maher, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Steven Weinberg. The website explains the aim of the project:

The project will draw on the talents of prominent and creative thinkers from a wide range of disciplines - science, law, literature, entertainment, information technology, etc. — to encourage critical thinking and wise public policy. It will convene conferences, produce films, sponsor scientific research and opinion polls, award grants to other non-profit organizations, and offer material support to religious dissidants and public intellectuals — with the purpose of eroding the influence of dogmatism, superstition and bigotry in the world.

There are few things I can think of that are more worthy of funding. I hope this project succeeds. Sam Harris was recently engaged in a back and forth with Philip Ball, a freelance science writer, over some comments Ball made in his recent Nature article concerning the conflict between science and religion. Reading this informal debate reminded me of what I love about Harris. Besides his impressive knack for metaphor and elegant use of the language, the man can point out the absurdities of religion like no other:

To give you a sense of how bizarre Mr. Ball’s opinions will appear to rational people everywhere, imagine reading a column in Nature that criticized scientists for taking too adversarial a stance with respect to witchcraft—even in Africa, where a belief in the efficacy of magic spells, invisible spirits, and the occasional human sacrifice remains widespread. If the analogy between religion and witchcraft seems hyperbolic, please take a moment to review the actual tenets of the world’s major religions.

For instance, a reconciliation between science and Christianity (the explicit goal of The BioLogos Foundation) would mean squaring physics, chemistry, biology, and a basic understanding of probabilistic reasoning with a raft of patently ridiculous, Iron Age convictions. In its most generic and well-subscribed form, Christianity amounts to the following claims: Jesus Christ, a carpenter by trade, was born of a virgin, ritually murdered as a scapegoat for the collective sins of his species, and then resurrected from death after an interval of three days. He promptly ascended, bodily, to “heaven”—where, for two millennia, he has eavesdropped upon (and, on occasion, even answered) the simultaneous prayers of billions of beleaguered human beings. Not content to maintain this numinous arrangement indefinitely, this invisible carpenter will one day return to earth to judge humanity for its sexual indiscretions and sceptical doubts, at which time he will grant immortality to anyone who has had the good fortune to be convinced, on Mother’s knee, that this baffling litany of miracles is the most important series of truth-claims ever revealed about the cosmos. Every other member of our species, past and present, from Cleopatra to Einstein, no matter what his or her terrestrial accomplishments, will (probably) be consigned to a fiery hell for all eternity.

I highly recommend The End of Faith or Letter to a Christian Nation for anyone interested.